Judge makes case for turning halls into gallery of vintage images

If you labored under the title of senior district judge, United States District Court, Northern District of California, you might be asked to explain the word "district," which is exactly what Charles Breyer has done - in historic pictures.

Anyone who has business with Breyer's court - or anyone who wants to see an array of rare black-and-white photographs of notable Northern California structures and events - can now ride the elevator to the 19th floor of the Phillip Burton Federal Building, 450 Golden Gate Ave., to see the display.

Outside the door to the ceremonial courtroom is a wall of 33 images depicting the district, which is mentioned three times in Breyer's job title, and runs through 15 counties from the Oregon border to south of Big Sur.

"You can learn the breadth, the scope and the reach of the court of the Northern District of California," says Breyer. "You get a panorama of the diversity of the region."

You also get free admission to a museum's worth of Northern California history in subtle sepia tone, with explanatory wall text. Titled "Ceremonial Legacy Mural," the collection outside the courtroom is the central focus of a major exhibition of photography that extends to every corridor and waiting area on the five floors of court real estate in the Burton Building.

Decorating these halls was a big job. The corridor leading to Breyer's office alone runs a city block, from Larkin Street to Polk Street. To see the entire exhibit, you'll walk two-thirds of a mile.

The photographs, 450 in all, represent about every landmark building, form of transportation, educational institution and major occasion going back to the Gold Rush. The photographers, including Carleton Watkins and Dorothea Lange, are all deceased, and most of their work is in the public domain, tucked away in library and historical society archives.

Two photo historians

Using fees that attorneys pay to appear in District Court, not taxpayer money, Breyer hired two photo historians to find the vintage pictures, scan them and reprint them in sharp contrast using digital technology.

"When the public comes to a courthouse, more often than not they don't want to be there," Breyer explains. "They are either tied up in litigation or jurors who are summoned, so it's an unfriendly set of circumstances. I want them, when they are dragooned into our courthouse, to find something that will engage them."

Brant Ward, The Chronicle

New prints of historic photos showing the construction of the Bay Bridge are among the rare and vintage images displayed.

Breyer, who was nominated to the District Court by the President Bill Clinton, came to work in this bland 21-story rectangle in 1997.

Most people would describe the exterior as "grim government issue." Breyer is more judicious, allowing only that it is "not terribly attractive." If the outside of the 1959 structure is bad, the inside used to be worse, with those long, uninterrupted corridors sucking the energy from anybody who had to traverse them.

"There was nothing on the walls, no photographs at all," he recalls. "It looked like a hospital corridor."

'Put up art'

Breyer, 71, the younger brother of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, still has a boyish enthusiasm. He wears bow ties with his robe and you can picture him, the new kid on the court, approaching the chief judge with a mild suggestion about enlivening the place. The chief judge made a quick ruling, which Breyer summarizes as, "Do you want a project? Put up art."

His first call went to his old friend Calvin Trillin. "This building is so boring," Breyer recalls telling the New Yorker writer.

Trillin directed Breyer to a book of courthouse photographs that he had written the foreword to. The project was sponsored by Seagram's, which hired 100 photographers to shoot county courthouses across America. The negatives were given to the Library of Congress, which sells prints for $35 each. Breyer bought a set of 500 to display in the Burton and the district courthouses in Oakland and San Jose.

Brant Ward, The Chronicle

Judge Charles Breyer on his 10-year project: "You get a panorama of the diversity of the region."

"That became a focal point of jurors," he says. "As they would come back from recesses, I noticed more and more jurors would be in the corridors looking at these photographs."

The next step was to give the people who appear before these jurors something to look at while waiting to be called to testify in court.

Vintage photographs

Breyer and his wife, Sydney Goldstein, who runs City Arts & Lectures, went to an event at the Omni hotel and left with the name of Bennett Hall, who had curated a set of vintage photographs of San Francisco for display in the hotel.

At 8:30 a.m. the next day, the phone rang in Hall's office. He was surprised to have a judge on the line.

"At first I thought it was a friend of mine having fun with me," says Hall, who runs Business Image Group, a small Oakland outfit that tracks down historic photos, makes new prints and frames them in cherrywood.

It has taken more than 10 years, but the installation in the Burton Building is finally complete. "It's a great way to make a court more welcoming and interesting," Breyer says. "After all, what goes on in courtrooms isn't particularly interesting most of the time."

Breyer's own chambers are on the 17th floor, which is announced by a sculpture of twisted tree branches spelling the word "ART." Originally this piece, by Gyongy Laky, was in the building's lobby by way of welcome. But the U.S. marshal deemed it perhaps too welcoming to the type who might be looking to whittle a weapon out of a branch.

Baseball bat

So it was removed to the 17th floor, where Breyer has a baseball bat hung over the entrance to his suite of offices. This could also be construed as a weapon, but in fact it accentuates his main artwork, which is the original iron sign welcoming baseball fans to Pacific Bell Park.

These artifacts belong to Breyer and you have to be there on business to see them. But the photography belongs to the people, and the hallways are open to anyone willing to suffer the indignities of a security checkpoint at the entrance.